


Diagram of the Heart

by Lawen



Category: Original Work
Genre: Addiction, Androids, Angst and Tragedy, Bisexual Male Character, Depression, Dysfunctional Relationships, Falling In Love, M/M, Near Future, Self Confidence Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:48:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23292748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lawen/pseuds/Lawen
Summary: HOID's are only machines. Biological machines, yes, but still just machines built for human use, whether that be domestic, commercial, or just for the bedroom.  Just because he can, Marcus buys the top of the line model, giving his family another excuse to disapprove of him.  It ends up being the biggest mistake of his life before becoming something that, well, changes the world.
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story has ups and a lot of major downs. These moments tend to happen because of the main character himself and how he responds to things, not because of some evil external force. The main character is very flawed. The people around him aren't perfect either. Please don't be expecting a hero or an uplifting story. This really isn't that.
> 
> The first chapter is quite neutral, however, and not representative of the rest of the story. The first chapter is like that because he tends to hide who he is and what he's really feeling and thinking from other people, just like the rest of us who aren't saints. In the second chapter, he's alone and everything goes to shit. If you can get passed the second chapter though, you should be fine.

Stature. Muscle size. Hair length, texture, and color. Skin tone and optional variations including freckles. Scars—if any. Nipple size. Penis length and circumference in both erect and non-erect sizes. Hell, there was even a category for mole placement. The whole make-your-own-man interactive questionnaire seemed to have been spawned from some overly elaborate role-playing game or match-making website.

This wasn't a just game though or a one-night-stand, not with the load of very real money on the line. This questionnaire helped a person create to their specifications something that, depending on who you talked to, could have, maybe been considered alive.

But it definitely wasn't. HOID's were just machines. Sure, a biological, humanoid machine, but still just a human-engineered machine.

Marcus let his hands glide through the air, selecting, narrowing, widening, lengthening, shortening, pressing, stretching. After selecting specific areas, he moved sliders for muscle tone, color, features, faults, and then used his fingers for precision to make the final adjustments. Along with those adjustments, the computer compensated to make the effect as human-like as possible. unless someone was of mind to specifically override those calculations.

He'd been in the room for bordering on two hours. He barely noticed. In fact, with the two week waiting period required by law, this was his second time in the H.O.I.D. facility, and the other time had gone by just as quickly. It helped that this off-white, distractionless space, with its comfortable seating and snacks, was his own private abode while he was there. No employees bothered him. He'd shut off his phone when he'd started. Quiet music played from seemingly every part of the room, self-chosen from the virtual panel. It was currently a light jazz to kept the mood up.

This was his time to put the finishing touches his own personal masterpiece. And finally, he couldn't think of another thing to change.

Sitting down with a near collapse, Marcus blew out a breath and pressed the call button on the virtual panel which was there no matter what section he was in. Within moments, high-heals clanked on the marble floor. The door slid to the side, and the woman smiled at him.

"Is there anything I can get you, Mr. Ashford?"

"No, I'm good. Thank you, Grace." From the beginning, the woman had insisted Marcus use her first name, while she'd never once said his. "But I am done with the specifications."

She smiled a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Excellent. Do you have time today to finalize the design?"

"Yes, I do. I also uploaded the other documents. You got them?" Marcus offered his own fake smile, standing up.

"Yes, sir," she said with a nod. "I'll find Alice for you."

Over the next two days, his rich friends—family friends that weren't really his friends and had too much money and time on their hands, like him—were all giving him questioning glances although they were never concerned enough to actually ask what was up. His nights were rather sleepless in his anticipation and edginess.

Once he was standing in that white-washed room again though, Marcus had to agree with himself. He had indeed created a masterpiece.

Every curve, every angle, every carefully placed hair patterned on the nude arms, legs, torso, it all felt unbelievable to his searching fingers. Logically, he knew what this thing truly was that was floated in the air before him. It was an empty shell with no soul. Internally, it was merely computer program written to act like a human being. But that didn't matter to his human brain. He had to constantly remind himself that this thing before him wasn't alive. It was an empty shell, nothing more. That was all. No matter what it looked like. Never mind that its warmth penetrated his stress-moistened hands, that its breaths rose and fell, that if Marcus pressed his head to its chest, he would hear a false heartbeat.

"It's just a machine, nothing more," he whispered to himself.

This particular model of machine, customized and laid out for his viewing pleasure, cost more than most people made in their entire lifetime, but for him, it barely made a fizzle in his family's finances. But a life-sized play toy wasn't what he was supposed to spend his allowance on. His mother was going to hate it, almost as much as she hated the fact that she as never going to get a grandchild out of him, his only real purpose at this point. Not everyone had a knack for cutthroat business.

A couple of minutes later, his point-of-contact, over the last month, barely made a disturbance as she entered the room and moved to his side. After a slight pause, Alice said, "Mr. Ashford, I must say, you know the beauty of a man's form. Is it everything you specified?"

Marcus tucked shoulder length brown hair behind his ear and turned a grin on the shorter, professionally dressed woman. Marcus himself was dressed down in a t-shirt and jeans. "I..."

Alice looked up and her already present smile turned genuine. "We want you to be satisfied in every way possible. You can still make small adjustments."

He crossed his arms, hugging himself, and looked back at the laid-out body. He shook his head. "No. It's perfect."

She touched his arm to regain his attention. "We'll flash its TMP immediately, and we'll be able to deliver it to your home today. There's no need to keep you waiting any longer than you already have. Please, come with me."

He nodded and followed her out of the room. The two walked down a lavishly decorated hallway to a room filled with tables, plush chairs, 3D projections, and a single chair in the middle of the room that reminded him of his unwelcome childhood visits to the dentist. He immediately forgot about the memories though at the sight of his creation being walked into the room between two attendants, still suspended in the air, floating as if it were more magic than man-made. Or maybe possessed. Or a nearly weightless, helium-filled balloon. But Marcus knew it weighed exactly thirteen kilograms more than himself, according to the specifications.

Alice ushered him to a plush chair and offered him a glass of his favorite beer which he took and sipped. She sat herself down near him but in front of the 3D images of information he had little interest in.

In the air, the woman flipped some false pages around with her delicate fingers and then asked, as she continued scanning them, "What have you decided about attuning? Please remember that, in accordance to law, you will not be able to transfer ownership if it is attuned to you. If you decide at any point in time to relinquish ownership, the law states that its physical body must be destroyed. However, you are allowed to keep a copy of its current TMP, in case you wish to use it again in the future."

"You sound like you've said that a lot."

Her fingers stopped in midair, and she smiled at him. "I have. The matter is a serious one." Her ginger gaze rested on the naked body before them. "Attuned to you, it will bind with no other. It's not a decision to be taken lightly. Purely from a financial standpoint."

Marcus cleared his throat and looked back at the body, at every perfect inch of it, as all of this become much more than a mere personal joke or fantasy.

He could still walk out the door. He would lose every penny spent, yes, but he could still walk out.

But he didn't. He couldn't. Not anymore now that it was in front of him. The thought of them ripping him—it to shreds because Marcus didn't have the balls to follow through...

"It only takes a small sample of your tissue. Without getting overly technical, it works much like a virus, although one that could never be transmitted. We introduce an encrypted sampling of your genetic code into one of its cells. That code would then reproduce and permeate every cell in its body. Once started, the entire process only takes a few minutes without any further intervention from us. But, again, it's irreversible.

"Every touch from you will cause it to react. Even just touching something you touched where your living cells remain will generate an effect. I find it quite amazing, really, the science of it, to watch the cells react. However, it's not a decision you have to make today. At any time in the future, you can return here to have it done."

Marcus swallowed. "I do want it attuned."

She nodded. "We'll gather the sample in a bit. If at any time in the future, you decide the result is undesirable, we can reconstruct its body—"

"For a considerable fee?"

"Of course, although a bit less money than what you already paid. You mostly just pay for the cost of materials since we store all design information indefinitely. Afterwards, a clean version of its TMP would be installed. Please note though that you may notice slight differences in behavior afterward. This is normal but that will disappear over time."

"You mean, I'll forget."

"Essentially, yes." Alice paused a moment, studying him carefully, before she said, "It is good to remember this is a machine, Mr. Ashford, a collection of cells that only do what we program them to do."

Marcus looked away and found his gaze tracing over false pubic hair and in between false muscles to the limp but nonetheless promising thing between its legs. "We start out in the world with a basic program... Add things as we go."

"There is a difference. We are human. This thing never can be. They will always be our creation."

"And what is a human but the creation of two humans?"

"True, but there are still differences, ones it will never conquer." Her chair swiveled as she faced him fully, her folded hands resting on her lap. "By law, you are required to return to a local facility every two months for maintenance. At that time, a TMP reset will be done. No memory imprints will be lost. However, if this is not done, undesirable anomalies will surface and will reduce its function."

"I remember you mentioning that."

"Yes." She merely said before turning back to the images before her, flipping to another screen. Marcus stared at the side of her head. This conversation was starting to remind him of the ones he always had with his parents.

"Have you decided on your safeguard command?" At his half-laugh, she furrowed her brow a bit, an uncontrollable admittance to her frustration over the matter. It wasn't the first time she'd done it with him. When he opened his mouth, she interrupted with a, "Mr. Ashford, unfortunately, we will not be able to complete the final documents today if you will not provide one. Our legal requirements state—"

"I know what they state." He gritted his teeth and looked at the flashing of lights in the humanoid's eyes, the imprinting of the TMP that held every derived thought, memory, and personality trait his creation would have. The empty, yet colorful eyes stared at nothing when Marcus himself irrationally wanted it to stare with thought, with purpose. He wanted this thing to be more than just a lump of cells. He wanted...

Was it so hard to understand that maybe he didn't want this machine to stop once it started? That he didn't want that kind of control over it? His parents were pros at the single word command, one that could still stop him dead in his tracks when he was only a few months from turning twenty-four.

Couldn't this be the one thing they couldn't stop?

"Sir?"

"Lickerish."

"Licorice?"

He huffed and smiled. "Yes, licorice. I never eat the stuff, so I suppose its safe to say that I won't say it unnecessarily. Gets stuck in my teeth, not to mention the taste."

Alice furrowed her brows slightly. With that look, he guessed that she liked the stuff, but it wasn't her job to disagree with him when the law wasn't on her side. Instead of further comment, she merely told him to repeat the word for voice verification, which he did. A few minutes later, after her busywork, he placed his hand on a panel, which collected both his hand print and an unnoticeable amount of DNA to sign the remaining documents and for the attuning.

"Signed in blood..." he muttered under his breath, rubbing his molested hand with his other. Honestly, he would have given considerably more of anything they wanted, but a minuscule piece of his body and a mountain of money were enough for these people. "I'll be out of the house for the rest of the afternoon. Have it delivered between 5 and 6 o'clock."

She nodded as they stood, him leaving the nearly empty bottle on the side table. She handed him a small card, a physical copy containing all of the legal documents, manuals, specifications, contact information, everything he'd need to play with his new toy except for the lube. She walked him to the entrance a couple of floors down, talking, blabbering about all the fact and conditions that came to her mind as well as the scripted ones as well as some small-talk. He barely listened. His mind remained in the room where he'd left the body he'd just purchased. Once they got to the elevator though, he did have mind enough to turn his phone back on and text his driver.

When they stopped at the entrance, she said, "If you have any issues, contact us day or night. You have my personal number as well." He'd certainly paid them enough to have that privilege.

Marcus walked out the door and to the waiting car. Truthfully, he had nothing to do that afternoon, as was his norm. But for some reason, he couldn't face having that thing in his house just yet. Instead, he wanted time to think, to fantasize, to wonder what the hell he was doing.

Gone were his days of infantile drug use and endless days he'd roam the earth, purposely losing and disabling his devices so the world couldn't contact him. Granted, if his parents had wanted to, at any time, they could have called their vehicle back with him locked inside, but since they had no real use for him at that point in time, his sister already primed and ready to be the new CEO of their financial empire, they'd never bothered.

These days, Marcus liked to think he'd grown beyond childish things, earning a place of worth in the world in his off and on ventures that never went anywhere, but he knew that was a pile of shit. Especially considering what he'd just bought with his family's money. This purchase only proved he was still a child in too many ways.

Where was his devotion to his family's name? Where was his fucking business sense? Where was this wife he was supposed be banging along with the incoming grandchildren?

Nope, none of that for him. Instead, he'd bought something that was his personal plaything. Something that would always obey his every command. Something he could use and use and abuse and no one would give a single fuck.

Now sitting in his favorite cafe with his driver again waiting outside, a vision of Marcus growling to his self-given present, 'Get down on your knees, bitch," made him burst out with a short laugh over his cup of hot chocolate.

His smile dropped away immediately as unease took hold instead.

Yes, he could do just that. He could do anything to it, order it to do anything, and it wouldn't have any choice at all. It was almost a retelling of his life.

Then again, it wasn't even close. This machine wasn't human. At all. It wouldn't end up as screwed up as he had. It wouldn't even care, about anything, not really. Right? Right.

Right...

God, Alice was right. After his psychological evaluation required by law, they never should have approved his application, although she'd never said it in quite that way, not even before Marcus had flashed gobs of money in her face.

"What the hell am I doing?"

It was a hell of a time to ask.


	2. Chapter 2

Marcus pressed his back against the black leather couch in the sunset-brightened room, light that flooded in from the floor to ceiling windows. In the middle of the room, in front of him, a 3D projection of a man and woman fucked, hard, on a desk in a corporate office with the shades closed. He could hear the background noises of the office workers on the other side of the windows. The scene was nothing new. He’d seen the exact same concept in one of his dad’s old porn mags during a private viewing hiding in his parents' closet when he’d been like 8 years old.

Some things never changed.

He wasn’t looking at them though. His eyes remained glued on the door far off on the other side of his expansive apartment. He’d been sitting there, waiting patiently. For two fucking hours. He should have quoted an earlier time. The wait had long ago set his muscles on edge. At that point, he was worn-out completely.

The two changed position: doggy-style. Her squeals as he pushed into her ass drove his eyes to them for a semi-interested moment. The next moment, his gaze fixated on the door again.

“Why the fuck did I say 5 o'clock?” he growled to himself.

Twenty minutes. Just twenty minutes. His eyes closed.

“Just be patient for once.”

A few minutes later, he dozed off from mental exhaustion brought on by impatience, desire, and total boredom, then jarred awake to a chime and a woman’s voice, one he recognized even in his disorientation.

“Repeat.”

“You have two visitors at the door,” the computer woman's voice stated.

Before him, the two men were projected in all their clean-shaven, uniformed glory. The security desk had already let them through with his prior permission.

“Time?”

“Five o'clock PM”

“At least they're punctual,” Marcus muttered, rubbing his eyes as he stood. They’d probably been waiting outside for the last hour as bored as him.

Marcus heard a combined moan and didn't bother to turn around, nor shut the thing off. He walked to the door, trying to stroll, but ended up more speed-walking, as if this were Christmas morning instead of May 27th. The chime sounded again just as he reached it.

“Open.”

Both men shot to attention when the door opened and disappeared into the wall. His gaze fixated on the coffin-like metal box floating between them.

“Good evening, sir,” one of them said, but Marcus failed to acknowledge the greeting, so he cleared his throat and continued, “We're here with your delivery from H.O.I.D. This is the correct time?”

Marcus blinked at him. A particularly loud moan vibrated in the background. “Yes. Yes, it is. Come inside.”

Boiling over with a buffet of emotions he was doing this best to contain, he moved and allowed them to enter. Between them floated his purchase. Without effort, several feet inside, they stood the box up on its end. Quietly, they began to open it.

“No. I'll open it.” Both men backed up a step and looked to him. “Thank you.”

The two people in the projection began grunting and moaning with enthusiasm, reaching a climax that may or may not have been real.

Probably sensing he wanted them gone—him standing by the open door staring at them probably gave them a hint—the two delivery men made for the door. One of them stopped in front of him and held up a retinal scanner, and Marcus held still for a moment. When they strode out and he walked away, the door whispered closed on its own.

Moments turned into minutes as Marcus stared at the metal coffin. The room grew silent, the movie over. He let the considerable chunk of money sit there, partially opened, unused.

“What a waste of money...”

This had to be the stupidest thing he'd ever done. Maybe. Well, if not, it was at least the most expensively useless thing. Then again...

Marcus sighed and quiet feet took him forward. He laid a hand on the sensor, touching cool metal. At his touch, he heard the mechanics working inside, opening the box on its own. He stepped backward and tried to deny his heart trembled in anticipation and dread. The curved door slid inside the container.

And there he—it was. Marcus’ breath caught when its eyes opened, revealing a deep burgundy, seeming eternally aroused from that distance. Black hair framed its chiseled face and came to rest just below its nipples, giving a hint of tease. Nude to the world without embarrassment, it stepped forward and stood in front of the heavily breathing human, quiet, awaiting a command or maybe just acknowledgment.

Marcus did the only thing he could think of: he backed up, retreated, really, and stalked back to the couch. He swore he could feel its eyes on him as he did. He collapsed his back against the plush leather and then stared at his purchase as it stared back at him.

What a fucking waste of money.

A good ten minutes passed before he couldn’t stand the staring match any longer and ordered, “Come here.” His voice cracked with the words, and he cleared his throat, his eyes glued to the thing walking towards him. Every step quickened his heart and dampened his skin. When the graceful steps, far more graceful than any human could manage in such a state of undress, brought the form before him, Marcus could only stare some more, mesmerized at its perfection.

Nothing in the world had a right to be this perfect. But that was the point. This model had been developed to be a fantasy, a step beyond nature. It made Marcus feel smaller. Well, except for the hardness forming against his leg inside his loose sweatpants.

“Would you believe me if I said I didn't want this?”

It stared down at him, perhaps unsure, perhaps just awaiting another command. Then again, it probably was. Marcus needed to review the manual. There were probably setup commands that the delivery men would have done for him.

Eternal quietness made the room almost unbearable, especially since it was only disrupted only by Marcus’ heavy breathing.

He didn't want this. Fuck, this was a mistake.

Trying to break up the quietness, unable to stand it, he blurt out, “Get down on your knees, bitch.”

But it did just that.

Now nearly face to face, Marcus' breath caught in his throat. “You don't have to do what I say.”

The staring match continued. The whole of the situation brought out the exact opposite of what he should have been feeling at that moment. This play toy was supposed to bring him convenient pleasure, total control, physical and emotional security, simplicity in all things—Didn’t need to feed and water these things, after all, and could throw them in the closest when you were done with them and they would always, always act like they loved you, or feared you, or whatever your kink was. These were traits that couldn’t necessarily be found in a standard, complicated human-to-human relationship. He felt none of those things at that moment.

Wanting to defuse himself, Marcus tried to get a reaction out of it again with, “Do you have a name?” A laugh burst out of him. “Good God, I sound like I'm talking to a prostitute.”

It said nothing, merely stared. Then Marcus remembered he'd stated in the specifications that he didn't want it to speak. At the time, he hadn’t been sure if he could handle it speaking to him. His instincts had probably been right. But Alice had also told him it would still would have the capability if he voiced the command code in the cheatsheet.

After a shuttering breath, Marcus sat forward, his hair draping to tickle his cheeks, and reached out a hesitant hand to the thing kneeling less than a meter in front of him. At his touch, it shuddered, its eyes fluttering. Marcus jerked his hand away. Burgundy eyes fixated on him as its length grew between its legs.

“I'm sorry,” he whispered, meaning it. He pushed back into the leather and tried to control his breathing.

Its breaths grew heavy as well, surely a false reaction. Surely. But he knew it wasn't. Maybe it wasn’t a purely human reaction but it was still feeling something. They'd—he'd created it to be this way.

They stared at one another some more.

“Do you want to touch me?”

The length as its groin twitched.

Marcus swallowed. “You can touch me, if you want.”

A thick hand reached up and out and feathered the barest touch on his bare, crossed arms. It sucked in a breath it didn't need.

“Licorice,” Marcus blurted out.

Instantly, the motion stopped, and its eyes glazed over.

The human sat there, panting, staring at this thing he'd paid to have created, who was nonetheless his creation. Who said you needed a female, or at least an egg? Then again, he didn't truly know the specifics of the humanoid's creation. No one did outside of H.O.I.D. The process was patented more than any other invention in history and way more secret than the current color of the president's underwear.

Its touch stayed at his skin, frozen in time. He blew out a shaky breath before he whispered, “Licorice.”

It blinked, a resetting, then refocused its gaze on him and the stimulation their touch was creating in it.

“Do you know I hate the stuff? Licorice is fucking nasty.”

Seemingly ignoring the words, its touch traveled up one arm and to his bare chest, over a nipple, and to his bellybutton, then back up, as if searching for the source of pleasure. Marcus let his eyes flutter shut as the humanoid touched him, molested every part it found interesting. Finally, it found Marcus’ hard length. Quietly, with inserted knowledge—Marcus had no desire to teach a virgin—it pulled down the front of his sweatpants and took the length into its mouth. Its moan nearly matched his own, one of the few sounds its programming currently allowed it to make. And it sounded beautiful, sensual, almost orgasmic in itself.

There were extra sensors in its mouth, as well is its cock and hole, making it crave stimulation specifically at those places, as any human would. That knowledge didn't stop Marcus’ panting.

It sucked and licked and savored every inch of his erection, expertly brought him to a quick orgasm with no sign of having a gag reflex. By the end, Marcus held its head, forcing it again and again on him. Although, in reality, it could have easily out-powered him. It swallowed all of his cum. Detangling his fingers from its hair, Marcus let go, his whole body shuddering, his harsh breaths filling the room. It shifted away from him as Marcus collapsed back into the couch to ride out the after effects.

A minute later, when the orgasm had settled down, he cracked open his eyes and realized its gaze had never left him. It was probably waiting for some kind of input.

Cautiously, Marcus reached out and moved ebony locks from its eyes and behind an ear. It clearly felt every trace of the touch as its breaths grew heavy. Its eyes fluttered closed.

“You don't have to stop.”

It blinked at him, pausing, but then resumed feeling him, touching him everywhere there was skin, but it gradually centered again on his cock.

After several minutes, every touch only making him hard again, Marcus grabbed its hands and held them. “Stop for a sec.”

There was no resistance except for its uncontrollable excitement. Marcus adjusted his pants and then stood up, forcing it to back up. Then it stood as well.

Face to face, they were about the same height, Marcus himself only slightly taller than his creation. The humanoid's muscles were more pronounced though. And its face was something that could have come from a fashion magazine, while Marcus’ own could have barely been picked out of a crowd.

This creature was his fantasy, his vision of perfection.

And he'd made himself its fantasy, whether it liked it or not.

Guilt, he felt it seeping into every part of himself. Despite his childishness and stupidity, he wasn't a selfish person. Not really. At least he hoped he wasn't. The thought of being like the rest of his family...

“Would you believe me if I said I was sorry?”

The humanoid frowned at him, a lovely expression, leaving Marcus to wonder what it would have said if it could have spoken. Was it already learning him? If so, what would it think of him in another week?

Marcus huffed at himself, his smile dry. How had he become so fucked up? He couldn’t even handle a relationship with a fucking robot.

And H.O.I.D. had already stated that fact. They’d given him the psychological tests required by law—Laws created because of public heath crisis resulting from unstable people owning such a machine. In the past, these machines had destroyed lives, families, whether from abandonment of normal life or all the way to murder.

They'd told Marcus that he an unsuitable candidate. In polite words, they'd told him to deal with his issues and then come back. But, well, laws had a surprising number of unspoken loopholes for rich brats.

Again he met its burgundy gaze and lost his smile. This was a mistake. He knew that now without a doubt. He should have listened. He shouldn't have been so damned defiant, needy. When the hell was he ever going to grow up?

He could take it back. He knew he wouldn't get a refund. The thing had already been made, paid for, and used. But they would take it back. They would get rid of it for him.

The steady gaze never left his and it was he who looked away, embarrassed, disgruntled, so confused he wanted to scream.

It never touched him, didn’t try to comfort him while he was lost in these emotions. It wasn't human. It didn't care. It was an abomination, just a biological piece of machinery that could be destroyed far easier than it had been created. Its death wouldn't matter.

He burst out with a short, tearful laugh. Death?

Suddenly its hand was at his hair, moving tear dampened locks from his eyes and behind his ear. It was Marcus’ turn to blink at this man-made creature. The hand moved to the back of his neck and flexed, caressed, drinking in the exposure to its attuned body. Marcus couldn’t help but smile, watching the humanoid watch its own hand's movement. The touch felt good. He sighed when its other hand moved over his shoulder to his back to caress him there are well. With the embrace, their bodies almost touched. Its gaze met his.

“Am I supposed to believe you care?”

Cautiously, Marcus leaned forward and brushed his lips over its own. Hungrily, it moaned and captured his lips in a deep kiss. Their bodies pressed together. It groaned in his mouth. Its naked hardness pressed against his clothed leg. Their tongues touched, caressed, and Marcus knew he was so lost already.

It pumped against his body, obviously relishing in the feelings created. Marcus grabbed its length and stroked it. Its arms tightened almost until he couldn't breath properly, with or without the mouth sucking and nipping at him. Marcus pushed at it and it instantly relinquished its hold, staring at him in a daze.

“Come with me.”

Hand in hand, Marcus led it to his upstairs loft. Few had been up there, like his cleaner, and some of his one or two-night stands. When they reached the top, it was against him again, pressing him up against the stomach-height railing, claiming his mouth, grabbing anything and everything it could reach without breaking the kiss. Its hand slid under his waistband. He felt a finger at his hole, entering it, and he gripped its rippling back in his fists, wrapping a leg around his new lover, giving it better access. A finger pressed into him, then another, impatient.

Marcus moaned at the pumped fingers and bucked his hips in the same rhythm. It dry finger-fucked him, kissing him, grinding their groins together.

Somehow he managed to pull away long enough to hiss, “I want you to fuck me.”

Without hesitation, he was turned around, and it crouched down, yanking down his pants, spreading his cheeks, licking his hole until it was sopping wet. The man held himself together somehow enough to keep standing, his hands white-fisting the railing for support.

After a minute that felt like hours as Marcus trembled and moaned, it stood back up and pressed its self-lubricating cock against his entrance. It went in easily, both moaning with the intrusion. It shoved its weight against him, but also held him against itself in an unbreakable bond. His cock wobbled in the air with each thrust, untouched and aching. Each thrust brought overwhelming pleasure. It sucked and bit at his neck, his shoulder, coming close to drawing blood. Marcus’ pants could barely be heard over their slapping bodies. His pants became groans, then moans, then hissed breaths and calls.

The chemicals produced in the human's body allowed a reaction in the humanoid's that also permeated back into the human's skin. It worked like pheromones. It worked too well, it seemed like, Marcus’ body more keyed up and hard than it’d ever been in his life. Marcus had no chance against it.

His cum squirted down to the floor below. That was going to make the cleaner hella happy if he forgot to clean it up. At the same time, its calls matched his own. Gradually, its hips stopped pumping and their breaths calmed together.

Both still panting, it kissed his shoulder, his sweat-dampened hair and neck. It took a few more moments before he managed to compose himself a small bit.

He was beginning to see why people liked these things so much.

“God.” Marcus laughed, despite himself. He groaned when it removed its cock from him. “Do you have any idea how good that felt?”

Silence. Only their breaths let them know someone lived.

The human turned around and looked at his creation. Despite the silence, he could see that it already wanted more, would always want more. Like a drug to it, it was addicted to him. And that was his fault.

“You don't have to stop.”

With that, it was on him again, feeling him, using Marcus how he was supposed to be using his machine. It pulled him to the bed. He let it fuck him.

An hour passed. Then two. It still wanted more. It only stopped when Marcus started crying silently, then started up again after he stopped. Stopping and starting. Again and again. Until Marcus felt sick with hunger and exhaustion. Until his insides hurt. But it was never satisfied, it never had enough. That was the whole point though, he knew, but he'd done this to it. He'd made it forever wanting, needing him. He'd done this. So he let it fuck him until he could no long keep exhaustion at bay.

When he awoke, it was still inside of him, and at the fluttering of his eyes, it picked up it motions again, panting against his ear.

He burst out crying and it stopped again. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry...”

Marcus shifted around his aching body so that he could face his creation. After a moment, looking into its needy eyes, he kissed it. It moaned into his mouth and sought his hole again, which he offered with a tilting of his hips. The erection stung going back into, and he whimpered into its mouth. It kissed him with far more enthusiasm.

Marcus let it continue. He knew he could have stopped it at any time, with a single word. But he couldn't. He didn't want it to stop. He didn't care how much it hurt, how terrible he felt. He wanted it, he wanted it to want him.

When it followed him to the bathroom, after he relieved himself, it fucked him on the chilly bathroom floor. While they fucked, he blacked out in its possessive embrace.


	3. Chapter 3

Marcus awoke on a firm bed surrounded by light. After he got over the fact that his gut and ass hurt like Satan himself had taken a bite out of him, his first real thought was that it that this wasn't his own bed. The smell of the room helped confirm that. His apartment smelled like sandalwood and vanilla. Wherever he was, it smelled of disinfectant and disease. If he was where he thought he was, where the hell were his drugs?

The man forced his eyes to crack open. The light was natural light coming in from the nearby window. Under the window sat his sister.

Gloria lifted her head when his head turned towards her and watched him carefully for a moment. "Are you coherent this time?"

That deserved an official fuck you, but his mouth felt stuffed with sticky cotton. He moved his swollen tongue around, trying to get saliva to flow.

Gloria pushed herself out of the plush couch and walked over to him, her heels clacking on the linoleum floor. Her exquisitely-tailored, custom suit and thick gold jewelry screamed her wealth. It was a stark contrast to his usual jeans and t-shirts. She leaned over him slightly, her eyes shifting left to right as she studied his own eyes. "Nod if you can understand me."

He did, even though his stiff muscles in no way wanted to cooperate.

She blew out a sigh. "You've been in and out since yesterday. When mom found out why you ended up in the hospital again, she left real fast."

Marcus frowned. Why _was_ he here? This didn't really feel like a drug overdose, not with his lower back hurting like hell. Did he pass out and fall on something? "Get me some fucking morphine." His voice was gravely, barely comprehensible.

She seemed to get it though as she leaned farther over him and hit the call button on the other side of the narrow hospital bed. A nurse came in a minute later. "He needs something for the pain."

The nurse left and then came back a couple of minutes later with an injector. She put the pain medication directly into his IV bag. He watched her do it and prayed it'd work quickly. "Is there anything else I can get for you, Mr. Ashland?"

He just barely shook his head with muscles that didn't want to move and then almost sighed as his body loosened when the pain began to evaporate. His eyes closed as he tried to ignore the queasiness it also brought to his stomach.

Gloria said, "No, we're good. Thank you."

The nurse walked away and Marcus could sense Gloria turning her full attention back on him, especially when her breath hit his face as she sighed. He opened his eyes again. She was closer now, examining his features with small flicks of her eyes. He probably looked like shit.

"They had to operate. You had tearing in your anal canal. Fecal matter leaked through and caused a massive infection. They have you on a couple of different antibiotics until the tests come back. And some other shit. They're trying to prevent septic shock. Jesus Christ, Marcus, you almost died. Again." She sighed again, standing up, pity and disappointment in her eyes. "You've been doing so well. I thought we were past this. You could be so much better than this. And I'm not talking about the gay sex. Look, I love you lots, but you need to stop this. You're.... You're going to kill yourself. Is that what you want or something?"

Marcus could only blink at her, trying to figure out what the hell she was talking about with all his might. He hadn't fucked anyone for weeks.

"You're lucky your HOID contacted 911." Her delicate, plucked brows furrowed. "When did you get a HOID anyway? I thought you hated the things. You won't even let one into your apartment to clean it."

...His HOID? He didn't have a HOID. She was right. He hated the things. Because their vacant eyes reminded him way too much of himself, spending their lives always under someone's thumb. Why was she saying that...

Then everything came back in one large heap of memory. Every sweaty, heated, lustful, glorious, never-ending, apologetic, painful, despair-ridden moment of it. "Oh my God... Where is it?"

"Where's what?"

"My HOID."

"I assume your apartment." She tilted her head slightly and really scrutinized him. "Wait, it's not one of those sex ones, is it? Is that who you were fucking?" He jerked his gaze away from her accusing eyes. "Oh my God. Was it malfunctioning or something? They assumed it was consensual sex because you had no bruising outside of some hickeys. They didn't find any drugs in your system either. We all thought the guy just ran off after screwing you into oblivion. They did a rape kit, and we're getting the fucking semen DNA tested in case we had to file a criminal case. But I guess we know now what the test results are going to be."

His gaze shot back to her as his muscles tensed, but he couldn't sit up like he wanted to. His body just wouldn't let him. "Don't let them take it away."

"What? Why? If it's malfunctioning—Marcus.... Don't tell me you wanted this to happen."

He huffed dryly, his eyes fluttering shut. It was getting harder and harder to stay awake. "It's not its fault. It was only doing what I wanted. What he wanted..."

"He wanted? Who's 'he'? Marcus, if you don't start answering me, they're going to pull the damned security footage, with or without your permission. Is that what you want?"

"No. No, don't... I don't. I don't," he mumbled, barely coherent.

A small sob sprung out of her, obviously against her will because the woman never cried. She hadn't even cried when she'd broken her leg. Screamed like a fucking banshee, yeah, but that was because she was pissed as hell that she couldn't continue on in the soccer game. The tears had just been a side-effect of agonizing pain. No, she'd never once sat down and cried over herself. She wasn't like him.

"Fuck, Marcus, why are you so stupid?"

He didn't disagree with her. And that was the last he heard as sleep took him again.


	4. Chapter 4

Nearly two weeks later, released from the hospital with a few codeine, antibiotics, stool softeners, and a take care, Marcus stood staring at nothing in his empty apartment. Empty of his HOID. The coffin-like box was gone, too. It was like it'd never even been there. It was like nothing at all had changed. Except in Marcus' own head.

His body slightly trembling from both physical and mental weakness, he loosened his fist and let the small suitcase drop to the floor with a clatter. Then he said in a voice that cracked, "Margo, when was the footage from May 27th and 28th last accessed?" He already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it for himself, because he was apparently a masochist and wanted to feel the stark humiliation of it all over again.

"May 29th at a secondary location."

His face, his whole body burned. He let out a shaky breath, barely able to hold back tears he didn't want. "I want you to delete that footage." He ground his teeth together as his face scrunched up.

"Please confirm you would like the security footage deleted from May 27th and May 28th."

"Just fucking do it."

A second later, the unconcerned voice stated, "The footage from May 27th and May 28th has been deleted."

"Delete everything. All of it."

"Please confirm you would like all security footage deleted. Be advised that a backup copy will be kept indefinitely with Guardian."

"Do it and get them on the phone."

Twenty minutes later, after arguing with the man on the other end for basically every second of it, he was told, over an over again, that since he wasn't the primary account holder, he wasn't allowed to delete anything. If he wanted the footage deleted, he needed to have his father contact them. And that wasn't going to happen. He couldn't call him. Not because of this.

Besides, his dad probably wouldn't have had it deleted anyway, especially because Marcus wanted him to. He'd keep it there as a reminder to Marcus of how much Marcus had failed. Again. Because maybe, just maybe, it would help Marcus learn his lesson this time.

Well, fuck him.

"Call Alice," was out of his mouth before he really thought about it.

Seconds later, her voice came over the speakers. "Good morning, Mr. Ashland. I hope you're feeling better."

Marcus blanched. She knew too. He could hear it in her slightly hesitant voice. Who didn't know that he'd been fucked into surgery by his own robot?

"Fucking great, thank you for asking. I need you to recreate my HOID with no alterations."

"Sir, I do apologize..."

His heart sank as tears threatened again.

"However, after reviewing your application, we will no longer be able to fulfill your request. The contract is now void and the funds paid have been returned to your account. If you have any further questions, I advise you to contact Mr. Ashland's lawyer."

Meaning, his father's lawyer.

"Margo, hang the fuck up!"

"Call ended."

The room went deathly silent, outside of his hammering heart and tearful breaths. Then he jolted when Margo's computerized voice chimed in.

"As a reminder, Dr. Hansen will be arriving for your appointment in two hours."

His new psychiatrist. Marcus hacked a dry humorless laugh. How long was this one going to last?

  
  


~~~ Nearly two years later ~~~

  
  


Marcus unbuttoned his suit and slipped the coat off, laying it over the back of the dining room chair. He fingered the tie, loosening it, as he stared at the familiar box several meters from the door. He'd spent... every minute of the last two years with this moment in the back of his mind.

Two years of kissing psychiatrist ass and taking on a small part in his family's empire had gotten him to this point. Hell, he was even dating a woman, for a few months now, just to make his mother happy. She was nice enough and rather thrilled at the size of his bank account. He probably would have been, too, from the outside. Then he'd lied his ass off on those psychological tests, telling them exactly what they wanted to hear. Because the truth wasn't going to get him anywhere.

Hell, yes, he was happy, stable, and seeing a woman who wanted some extra excitement in the bedroom. The HOID wasn't even his idea! Hell no!

All lies. For this very moment. Megan didn't even know he'd bought it, his dirty little secret. She probably would have flipped her lid, crying that she wasn't enough for him, that he didn't really love her. And she would have been right to a degree, although he really did love her. Just not the way she wanted him to.

But, now that this moment had come, now that it was sitting in his living room, he could only stare. Again.

He blew out a shaky breath and didn't know if he could ever open the box. It was like looking at a baggie of heroin. In fact, it was that because this felt exactly the same. Once he partook... Would he ever be able to stop without being forced to?

But that HOID had only been in his life for one single day. This wasn't years of going from one drug to the next until there wasn't one that could make him feel good anymore. This thing wasn't a drug. Logically, this wasn't the same.

But it still felt the same. It felt as if he was being pulled to it against his will, no matter how much he protested, because in the end, part of him did want it.

"Fuck, I can't do this."

He couldn't. He just couldn't. It was as big of a mistake as it'd been two years before. And, with five months until his twenty-sixth birthday, he had even less excuse now than he did before.

His strides took him to the fridge. He took out one bottle of beer. And then another just to save himself some effort. Then he collapsed onto his couch, put one bottle to the side, twisted the cap off the one still in his hand, and guzzled down what he could before he had to breathe. He sucked in breath after breath, trying to calm down.

He hadn't dealt with a single thing, had he, he realized now. He'd been faking it for their benefit, because he'd wanted it. Because it wasn't fair in the least they'd forcefully taken it from him. But maybe they'd been right. Maybe they were always right.

Out of the corner of his eye, the box taunted him, teased him, made promises to him that it was probably perfectly capable of fulfilling if only he could control himself.

But he could, right? Hadn't he proved that he could over this last year?

He cracked open the second bottle. The beer was swimming around, nauseating his gut, within a couple more minutes. He tried to find strength in the stuff, strength to conquer himself. As if that could have ever been found in a bottle of beer.

Finally, as the room began to dim, a bit tipsy, he turned his head to eye the container.

"Fuck it."

He was on his feet, slamming his hand on the sensor. The mechanics went to work. He took a step back. The door slid open. It's eyes opened, and it stepped forward. Those burgundy eyes focused on him and he forgot how to breath.

It didn't remember him. It couldn't. This android was a complete reboot. The TMP from his first machine had been destroyed at his dad's request. But Marcus had kept the card Alice had given him which contained all of his HOIDs specifications, glad H.O.I.D. hadn't taken it too when they'd returned for the machine. He'd also gone to a different H.O.I.D. facility rather than risk Alice being his point-of-contact again, fearing she'd see right through him.

And then he was on it, his arms around it, hissing it hard, deep. It kissed back with as much ferocity, moaning, grinding, its length hardening and pushing against his groin. He held onto it as it held back. As if it wanted to be there, with him, only him. As if he was the only person in the world and everything he was was perfect and exactly what it wanted. It felt like love and Marcus found himself so lost in it. Again.

Then it was pulling him down to the hardwood floor, getting in between his legs, stripping off his tie, unbuttoning his shirt as if impatient to touch his skin. It probably was. It kissed and nipped at his neck, his revealed shoulder, his heaving chest, as it unbuttoned his dress pants, yanked down his boxers, and gripped his cock. It stroked him, the full length of him, before it shifted its ass to his knees, and went down on him. It sucked and licked as if he was delicious candy. Its moans and groans mixed with Marcus' own, filling the room with the sounds of sex. Marcus grabbed at its hair, planted his feet, and jutted his hips repeatedly, fucking its mouth with everything he had. It took it and wanted more. It loved to be fucked, probably more than Marcus himself did.

Marcus climaxed hard, coming deep in its throat and mouth with each thrust. It took everything he offered and still licked and sucked until Marcus hissed at the over-stimulation. Then it came back up, resting its forearms on either side of Marcus' head, their cocks nestling together, and kissed him again, deeply, letting him taste himself.

A minute later, out of breath, Marcus pushed on it slightly and it relented, looking down at him with its burning burgundy eyes. It looked like love and total devotion in them, and Marcus was so stupid for even just thinking that it was.

"I need—I need to keep this in perspective," he panted, having barely caught his breath.

It watched him carefully. He watched it back, his eyes flickering over its beautiful face, taking in every curve and angle of it, as he tried to talk himself down.

"You're not human. You're not."

It said nothing, didn't agree or disagree. It couldn't talk. It just waited, listened, watched his body for signs, as it was programmed to do.

And Marcus didn't know whether he agreed with himself. Honestly, he had no idea. And that was what made this so much of a mistake, as much of one as it'd been two years before, but he hoped, prayed he could handle it this time, that he wouldn't let it go too far. That he could indeed keep his perspective and keep his android in the closest where it belonged.

Because it wasn't human. It just wasn't. And it never could be.

"Move," he ordered.

It shifted off of him without complaint. But Marcus could see in its eyes that it didn't want to. But he couldn't listen to its desire. Not this time. Or he might lose himself in it again.

So, he tucked himself back in, refastened his slacks, sat up with its help, then stood up. As he walked away, he straightened his shirt and buttoned a couple of buttons. He walked directly to the open kitchen to begin making himself something to eat. A homemade, simple creamy pasta with chicken and broccoli, he decided.

The whole time though, he felt its eyes on him until he finally couldn't take it anymore and blurted out, pointing to the couch, "There are clothes in there. Put something on."

It did as he commanded, digging through the bags, finding a set of clothes which it slipped on. Marcus couldn't help but look at it when it stopped moving, curious what it'd chosen to wear. It was dressed in a pair of washed out jeans and a nearly skin-tight black t-shirt. Marcus felt his cock twitch in his pants. It looked way too good, so passable as a human that it was almost frightening. If it wasn't for the slightly glowing tattoo on its neck that let the world know what it was, it could have. He didn't know how he was going to keep his head straight about all of this.

But he was. He had to. Because he didn't want it to be taken away from him again. And if he had to be everything he wasn't to make that happen, then so be it.


	5. Chapter 5

Two months and nineteen days later, Marcus was lying in bed, watching his HOID stand at the window, naked to the world. Up on the 35th floor though, in the penthouse, it didn't really matter. Someone would've had to have binoculars to see it since this building was the tallest one in this direction. Every morning he'd woken up the past few days, he'd realized it wasn't in bed. Instead, it stared out the window. At what, he didn't know, but every morning, he watched it, wondering why it was doing it.

But he didn't dare ask. Besides the fact that it couldn't answer him, he was afraid of the answer. That it wanted out.

After he'd missed his appointment, he'd been getting reminders for the past three weeks that it was time to bring his HOID in for maintenance. Those reminders had been getting steadily more frequent, encouraging him to set an appointment for it. The last four days, the reminders reminded him that he was required by law to bring his HOID in. Immediately.

He probably would have made the appointment the other day, if it hadn't been for what his HOID was doing right at that moment. He'd noticed other little things lately, too, like how it responded to music. It liked alternative rock, of all things. It was obvious. Whenever he came back from work or dinner with his family and girlfriend, it was always playing.

Could these small things be the anomalies they'd talked about? If so, how could they possibly be bad? Wasn't impersonating a human exactly what these androids were supposed to be doing?

He shifted on the bed and his HOID turned his head and... smiled. Marcus' breath caught. It'd never smiled at him before. It was part of its specifications not to smile. He hadn't wanted it to, fearful that he'd give meaning to something that didn’t truly have any. It was the same reasoning behind not giving it a name.

It wasn't supposed to smile.

It walked over to him, as silent as ever. He'd never given it the ability to speak for the same reasons he didn't want it to smile.

Marcus sat up, watching it carefully, watched its thick cock sway left and right with each step, a hypnotic dance. It climbed into bed and, on hands and knees, kissed him longingly, making it moan. Making Marcus moan. One of its arms shifted, trapping him between them, each palm at either side of his hips. His morning wood only got harder. Fuck, he could have stayed in bed with it all day long. But he knew where that led.

The kiss continued until Marcus turned his head. "I have to get to work. Move."

It didn't move. Instead, it stared at him until Marcus turned his head back to look at it, pulling back slightly since they were so close.

"Move," he repeated.

It still didn’t move. It only frowned slightly at him. Then its gaze lowered to his lips. And then it leaned forward instead of backward.

"Move!" he half-shouted at it.

It stopped. A few rapid heartbeats later, it slowly sat back on its heals, watching him, its face expressionless. But the human could sense something lurking underneath, and it scared the shit out of him. This thing was always supposed to listen to him, never question him, always obey.

At work, with his family, he already had more than enough people who didn't listen to him, who talked behind his back, who yelled at his face. This HOID was supposed to be the one thing that always obeyed his commands. But it wasn't listening to him, not really, not as it should.

What the fuck was going on?

Covered in a light layer of sweat, he realized he now understood the maintenance requirement. Whatever was going on with his droid, it was messing with its programming.

Marcus kept a watchful eye on it as he pushed himself off the bed. He kept his eyes on it for as long as possible, until he'd entered the large bathroom and shut the door.

"Margo, set an appointment at the nearest H.O.I.D. facility for me for maintenance. Preferably today or whenever's soonest."

A few seconds later, her voice said, "I've connected with H.O.I.D. They have an appointment available at 10 A.M. today. Is that acceptable?"

"Yes, set it. And inform the office that I won't be in until the afternoon."

"I'll let them know."

Marcus blew out a shaky breath and tried to calm down. Two years earlier, he probably would have been amused as hell if his robot had started acting like this, had rebelled against him. It'd been his whole grand idea, after all, along with a solid fuck you to the world. Okay, to his parents.

But now...

Now, he just had to take it in and get it fixed before something went wrong again. He'd only had the fucking thing for two and a half months. He had no intention of being forced to give it up again.

Of course, if he'd had so much intention, then why hadn't he taken it in for maintenance when he was supposed to?

Ignoring the unhelpful thought because it threw right back in his face his less desirable traits, Marcus stripped out of his sweats, kicking them towards the laundry bin, and then entered the large shower. The clear, smoothly textured panels allowed plenty of natural light through.

At 8 in the morning, it wasn't even necessary to turn on the lights on this side of the building. The whole penthouse was set up that way. The bedroom and bathroom had the morning light. The living room and kitchen and dining room in the middle had the evening light so the sunset could be watched curled up by the fireplace sipping wine.

He turned on the water and began lathering up his hair. He let that sit and then started working on the rest of the body, scrubbing clean like he meant it. When he started on his face though, he heard the sound of the shower door opening. He whipped his hands up and down his face, trying to get the soap off under the water.

Before he could though, he felt arms around him and a face nuzzle his neck, making his skin tingle to life. A thick, hard cock nestled itself between his ass cheeks. Mostly free of soap, he turned his head and could only see the top of his android's head, as it kissed a line over his shoulder. A hand snaked down and stroked from base to tip his rapidly growing erection. Marcus didn't know which direction to move, against that cock or into that hand.

Everything it was doing was making it extremely difficult to remember he’d just been freaked the hell out by it.

The hand stroked again. Its other hand wrapped around his waist tightly and pulled his hips back against its stomach so it could thrust at his crack. Becoming lost far too quickly, Marcus tilted his head back to rest against its shoulder, assured in its inhuman strength.

"We could just stay here," it whispered in a low, sensuous voice after a kiss.

Marcus froze. Even his heart seemed to seize up. The android stopped its stroking, thrusting, and kissing as well, surely noticing Marcus' sudden stiffness that had nothing to do with his cock. Marcus jerked around and then backed up a step, his back hitting the icy tiled wall. He barely noticed the wall as he stared wide-eyed at his creation. His mouth hung open a bit but nothing came out save his suddenly heavier breaths.

It stared at him as if it'd never spoken a word. But, holy fuck, it had spoke!

Maybe if he hadn't put so many restrictions on it, these changes wouldn't have been quite so noticeable. But Marcus was noticing everything. All these small changes were adding up to something he wasn't sure he wanted to understand.

But it was still just a machine. It hadn't suddenly become human in the last few days. All of this was just its programming going haywire. It needed maintenance. They needed to reset its TMP so that all of these anomalies would just vanish.

He remembered Alice talking about noticing small changes after maintenance. Well, they were going to be big ass changes for him.

"You're not supposed to talk," he blurted out at it. When it only stared, because he couldn't stand the silence at that moment, he added, "Say something!"

It opened its mouth and then closed it again, before it said, "I don't know what you want me to say."

Yeah, Marcus didn't know what to say either.

"Get out and get dressed. We're going to an appointment."

It watched him some more before it said, "I'm not going to hurt you."

Marcus blinked. Was his fear so obvious? Well, of course, it was. He was pressed up against the wall, wide-eyed and panting. What else was it supposed to think?

"I just need you to go get dressed. Please!"

It watched him for only a couple of seconds before it left the shower, grabbed a towel, and began to dry itself off. Marcus kept staring at it, his back slowly pealing away from the wall. The hot water hit his shoulder as he stood there. When it finally left to go get dressed, Marcus dunked under, rinsed off the rest of the soap, turned off the water, and cautiously left the stall.

Inside the bedroom, he could see the humanoid slipping on a pair of jeans and another t-shirt. And seeing it was so confusing to his bewildered mind. He had an extremely hard time not seeing a lover, a human lover in his room. But if it _was_ human, Megan was going to have his balls.

She'd had a hard enough time with his admission that he'd bought an over-sized sex-toy. He hadn't had much choice when she'd showed up unexpectedly and saw him with his tongue down its throat and its dick in his hand. Security always let her through and Margo recognized her as an off and on roommate at Marcus' request.

Megan had indeed cried, and he'd spent a good hour consoling her and then took her out on the town for a spending spree. That got her spirits up real fast.

Watching it now, Marcus dried himself off with harsh rubs, trying to get it done as quickly as possible so they could get to that appointment.

It wasn't until they were in the car that Marcus could finally breathe a bit normally again. That was until he looked at his creation. It looked out the window, as if it was trying to catch a glimpse of absolutely everything that went by. And it could do that, its eyes able to take everything into its computerized brain with a single glance.

But it was... looking. Not just staring, observing, but looking, as in actively seeking out anything and everything. And Marcus realized that it was trying to learn from all that it was seeing for the first time. This was, after all, the first time it'd been outside.

But it was supposed to care about sex and pleasing him. That was it. It wasn’t supposed to be looking out a window and completely ignoring him.

Androids just didn't act like this. They were focused on their tasks and their owners. They never strayed. They were exactly what their owners needed at any given time. That was why they were in such high demand.

But this.... This was...

Marcus touched its arm. It instantly turned its head and focused on him. Marcus could already see the excitement in its eyes from his touch. His touch still did that. It still had no choice but to respond.

Then again, maybe it was just excited by what it was seeing outside. Or perhaps both.

"Do…" He pressed his lips together for a moment. "We have some time. Would you like to walk around outside a bit?"

It was odd to be asking it a question like that. He never had before. Not a serious one, anyway, one he wanted answered.

It stared at him, hard.

It was hard for Marcus to keep his breathing under control. "It's not a trick question."

Finally, it said, "Yes."

It was hard for the human to tear his gaze away, too, but he did manage it and said, "Stop at the corner. We'll walk the rest of the way."

"Yes, sir," his driver said.

The town car stopped on the side of the road at the next point it could, which was another block in the middle of the city. After they got out, Marcus pointed and said, "It’s this way."

And so began their slow walk down the street. At the rate they were going, they weren't going to make it on time for the appointment but Marcus didn't even think to check the time.

The android looked at everything and everyone. And there was a ton to see on the busy city streets, small to huge buildings with numerous variations in architecture, mobs of people they had to work their way past. The sounds, sights, smells could easily overwhelm someone not familiar, but Marcus loved living here, drowning in the overabundance of life.

But seeing his android experience it now, it was honestly one of the strangest and most heartwarming things Marcus had ever witnessed in his life. The machine was child-like. And Marcus was just content to let his android explore. He realized he should have taken it out before that day. Of course, weeks ago, it probably wouldn't have reacted this way but maybe, if he had take it outside, it at least wouldn't have all been such a mystery to it. Then again, discovery was grand when one’s heart was in it.

When they finally arrive in front of the facility, Marcus checked his watch and realized they were almost 40 minutes late. The people probably still would have taken him as a walk-in though. They'd been calling him enough. Seconds later, he realized he was just staring down the sidewalk to the immense front entrance.

His android looked at him, stared really.

And Marcus realized he really didn't want to go in there anymore. With everything he'd seen and gone through over the past two hours, he just wasn't freaked out anymore like he had been. Besides, he was also, well, rather enjoying himself, content to walk quietly with his robot.

This...

This was actually exactly what he'd wanted when he'd bought the HOID.

Yeah, the sex was a big bonus. Okay, a humongous, tantalizing, passionate, lustful, pass-out-worthy bonus.

But _this_ , this freedom to be able to just live, the freedom for it to do what it wanted, the freedom to just be free and not under someone else's control. This was exactly what he'd wanted it to experience. It was something Marcus himself could never have.

Marcus stared at the door for another second.

Fuck the appointment.

It wasn't like the android was going to explode tomorrow if he didn't bring it in today. They didn't have to go in there right at that moment. Well, technically they did, if he was to be a law-abiding citizen. But since when had he been one of those? Well, since he'd tried his damnedest to get this machine back into his possession.

But now he had it. And the world still wasn't crashing down. Not yet, anyway.

"I've changed my mind," he said, smiling at it. "I've never showed you my jet."


	6. Chapter 6

The heavy music pounded the air outside the dive bar, amping up the already hot Miami air. Plus, the humidity was stifling. Marcus hadn’t felt dry since he’d stepped off the jet. His HOID was staring at the place, excitement in its eyes. Alternative Rock wasn’t Marcus’ thing, but it was his HOID’s and he want to make it, well, happy, if it could indeed feel such an emotion. But after these hours together, Marcus believed it could, at least in some way.

And if he was totally wrong… It didn’t really matter. It wasn’t like this day was going to last forever. He was already on borrowed time as it was. He’d have to take it in for maintenance at some point. Some laws didn’t have loopholes.

He’d managed to find this little hellhole surfing on his phone while they’d roamed the city. The club had a couple of Alternative bands playing that night. They’d taken a cab here though since it was on the other side of the city, hidden among the less reputable areas that vacationers didn’t usually see.

Marcus heaved open the heavy door, his HOID grabbing it afterwards, and they both went inside. He walked right up to the attendant’s window

“Twenty-five dollars,” the woman, covered in colorful mix of tattoos, hollered over the pounding beat. Then her eyes shifted, and she caught sight of what was behind Marcus. “Hey, no HOIDs in here.”

“Are you kidding me?” Marcus exclaimed with fake ignorance.

It wasn’t surprising. It was standard policy for clubs and bars. Androids didn’t drink, didn’t eat, both of which added up to be considerably more than the entry fee. They just took up valuable real estate. Besides, people wanted to dance and get drunk with real people, not some bought and paid for machine. And those that did, well, those people went where one paid by the hour for a willing machine and a bed to fuck it in, people who couldn’t otherwise afford a HOID.

“I need it with me. It’s my bodyguard.”

The woman gave Marcus a quick look over, flicking her eyes down and back up, taking in his plain, over-washed, sweat-stained t-shirt and well-worn jeans with strings hanging off the bottoms. He probably didn’t smell the best anymore either. Her assessment made, she permeated disbelief as she smirked at him and hacked a half-laugh. “Really?”

“I’m fucking rich.”

“And you came here? Whatever. It’s not like we’re overflowing tonight Just keep it in the back and out of the way.” She flipped out her hand. “And that’ll be fifty dollars.”

He grinned at her and let her swipe his card.

She grinned back, just slightly, as she handed it back. “Drink lots. It’s funner that way. Just don’t puke or get trampled.”

He smiled fully at her and walked inside, his HOID following him. Inside, it was just barely cooler but filled with so much energy that no one seemed to notice the dripping sweat. While the place wasn’t packed, there were still dozens of people there swinging their heads up and down and jumping their bodies to the beat and just generally moving around like they no longer had a thought in their heads. He walked up to the crowd, feeding on the excitement. The band played some old tune from decades past. A Nirvana song, he thought. Well, he was pretty sure anyway, certain he’d heard it at least once on some oldies Alternative station while flipping through stations.

His HOID came to stand next to him. Already, its head moved to the beat, perhaps mirroring the crowd. But maybe not. Each chorus was ferocious in its intensity, the lead vocalist barely comprehensible as he basically shouted the lyrics. Hell, even the calmer parts, he slurred. But the beat never stopped and the cockroaches were surely rocking it, too, as the floor and walls vibrated. Marcus grinned at his android and couldn’t help but join in.

By the time the next song came, a slower song, he was sweating noticeably again and out of breath and loving it. He laughed, putting an arm around his robot’s shoulders, hugging its sweatless, smiling body against his damp side. And then it made the most beautiful sounds Marcus had ever heard when it laughed with him. Laughed.

Marcus slowly stilled, watching it, his smile vanishing. It watched back, its smile dripping away.

How much did it really understand? To what extent was all of this just a mere imitation? Did it actually feel something? Could it? If someone had tried to convince him it couldn’t, he doubted he would have believed them, not fully anyway.

And it was absurd to think that way. Because it was just a machine. And after its maintenance, there would be obvious proof that it wasn’t human in any way. It would be back to how it was when he’d first pressed that sensor, just with some extra memories added in.

But so what? So what if it wasn’t human? Like humans were the end-all, know-all of existence, and the only way to feel or understand was to be human. It was absurd to think humans were the only ones capable of higher thought and emotions. Hell, dogs felt more than most people, as far as Marcus was concerned.

And what was a feeling really anyway? Just a reaction to stimuli that made one think, act, or react a certain way.

What was understanding? The ability to take knowledge and make sense out of it so it could be used in a useful way.

If his HOID didn’t do those things, then what the hell had it been doing every day of its existence?

Marcus turned his body, walking in front of it with his arm still around it. Then he brought his other arm up, letting them lay loose around its neck. And he smiled at it again. It smiled back slowly, resting its forehead against his as they rocked to the music together, its arms wrapping around his lower back.

So, maybe he was a fool. He always had been. And it really didn’t matter because, either way, he was happy. And wasn’t that the whole selfish point of owning one of these things anyway? He just had to hope that it was happy, too.

That feeling of closeness and euphoria lasted as the hours sped by and left him exhausted but so disgustingly happy, probably happier than he’d ever been in his life.

And then the proverbial clock struck twelve. Although, it was, in fact, midnight.

They were near the middle of the mass now since more people had come in after them. His HOID was jumping up and down along side everyone else, no one in the room giving one rat’s ass fuck if it was a robot. It probably helped that his HOID was fucking drop dead gorgeous and screamed sex to these drunken men and women alike. And they weren’t the only ones drunk. Marcus himself had already had at least five or six cheap, nasty-tasting shots that burned his throat and made him burst out coughing. Admittedly though, it was hard to keep count with so much stimulation to all of his senses.

But what happened next, it happened in an instant. His android stilled beside him, standing upright, facing forward, like stone, like when it’d first opened its eyes in its mechanical coffin. It took Marcus a moment to realize it though. But when he did, he stopped and stared, his drunken mind confused.

He touched its arm. “Hey, are you okay?”

When it didn’t respond in the least, he totally freaked out because he’d completely forgotten it wasn’t a human next to him. He grabbed its face, shaking it, trying to get some kind of reaction out of it. His first thought was that it was a drug overdose, but that made absolutely no fucking sense at all since it was still standing upright.

Racking his drunken brain, shaking it a bit more, he then managed to remember this man was an android. The now-blinking tattoo on its neck helped him figure that out. Marcus stilled and stared at its open eyes, trying to make sense of what was happening. Had it blown a fucking circuit or something? Did HOIDs even have circuits?

No one in the room helped him. Only the few people around them seemed to even notice, backing up a step, as much as they could because they probably didn’t know what was going on either, outside of the fact that Marcus was freaking the fuck out.

The music blared on but Marcus didn’t really hear it anymore. He stared at it, getting jostled occasionally from behind because the people behind him weren’t paying attention to anything but the music.

What he felt while started at it as his heart thrashed and nausea boiled…

It felt like he’d just lost everything in the world. It was a stupid notion. A drunken one, surely. This robot wasn’t everything in his life. Besides, it could be remade. Easily. Hell, whatever had happened to it probably fell under warranty. And he still had his judgmental family, his fake friends, his job that he hated. Well, at least he had two women in his life he loved, his sister and his girlfriend. But not even those two could understand what he felt at that moment because neither of them had ever felt this way about a machine.

And then he realized what it really felt like. It felt like six ago when his best friend from high school had died in his arms because Marcus had been too wasted himself to help him. No one had blamed Marcus though. His friend had been a drug user himself for years, despite any interventions. But it still felt like his fault, even now. The day his friend had died had been the last time he’d ever gotten high.

Minutes later, when it was obvious nothing was going to make his android move, he relented to fate, pulled out his phone, and texted his sister. The music was too loud for a phone call and he wasn’t about to leave his HOID standing there by itself. Within the hour, people from H.O.I.D. arrived, cleared a space to get to it, attached devices to his head, upper body, lower back, and legs, and then maneuvered it so that it floated between them and walked it out the door. He walked behind, with most of the crowd watching. It was a death march.

Outside, after it’d been placed in the waiting company vehicle, one of the men came up to him, scrolling through his tablet. “It says you missed its scheduled maintenance?” He looked to Marcus for confirmation. The man was repeating what Marcus had told his sister in the texts. “Okay, well, then it's most likely a mandatory shutdown. You need to keep up with the appointments in the future. We’ll take it in and they’ll check it over, just to be sure. And then they’ll take care of the required maintenance for you.” He frowned at him slightly. “You should have been getting calls warning this would happen. You didn’t get them?”

“I… I’m not sure.” He probably had been getting them. But he’d been deleting their messages before fully listening to them. Marcus forced his teeth to stop gritting long enough to say, “I don’t live here.”

“You’ll be here in the morning?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to pick it up then.” He handed Marcus a card. “This contains the address and contact information for the facility we’ll be taking it to. If you have any questions, you can contact them by the main number.”

The man joined the other two in the vehicle and drove off. Marcus had no choice but to let them go.


	7. Chapter 7

Four months later, it was time for his HOID's maintenance again. Under so much scrutiny, he'd kept his appointment two months prior. He'd been there at the H.O.I.D. facility, early even, like a good boy. This time though, it was harder. Much harder.

His android was sitting at the table with him as he ate his lunch, a heaping turkey, spinach, and cheese sandwich and a deli pickle. It was drinking its nutrient-filled liquid it needed once a week to help keep it functioning properly, like a child being forced to eat their vegetables.

And his android was nothing like it had been four months ago. Marcus never came home to an apartment filled with music anymore. It never smiled at him, never talked, never laughed. Yeah, the sex was good, always good, but he couldn't find his heart in it anymore, not when everything it did felt indifferent. Maybe that was just in his head, but he couldn't escape the feeling.

Of course, he always had the option to lift limitations he'd put into its specs. Then it would have been much more like he remembered. But if it'd had those abilities now because of Marcus' intervention, he wasn't sure he would have been able to recognize the real changes when they did happen. Every day of the last four months, he'd watched for signs that it was doing something unusual again, something it did just because it wanted to.

So, on that warm, sunny New York City day, the day of the appointment, he sat there, unable to move, because it was now clear that two months just wasn't enough time. If he wanted what he'd before, he'd have to wait.

But he was on everyone's shit list now. Again. It was bad enough his family knew he'd gone and purchased this thing again. Now, they were just waiting for him to fuck up, fuck his life up. Again. H.O.I.D also had his number. He'd been a liability to them two years ago. He wasn't much better in their eyes now.

But he still had his HOID. That was the important part, just keeping what was his. Right?

But if it all simply revolved around that, why did everything feel so wrong?

Well, because it was. All of it. At that point, he wasn't even sure he wanted his robot anymore. Because this wasn't what he wanted. He didn't just want a fuck toy to use. He wanted something from it he was obviously never going to have.

But according to society, that was the whole point. These androids weren't supposed to be friends, spouses, life-long loves. They were just tools. And H.O.I.D. and the law and the general public had every intent of keeping it that way.

Marcus gritted his teeth together, trying to hold back frustrated tears.

"I think... Maybe..." he said to it, as they stared at one another. A tearful yet dry huff burst out of him, and he smiled weakly at it. "I'm not sure this relationship is working out for me. Can we just be friends?"

It watched him, silent as ever.

"I... I'm not sure I can do this anymore. I'm sorry, but you're... You're not what I wanted."

And it only stared. It couldn't do anything else. Because it was just a machine. And he had to accept that.

Marcus shoved back his chair, stalked up the stairs, collapsed on his bed, and stared at the ceiling. It followed shortly after and curled up at his side, nuzzling its face against Marcus' shoulder. It was warm against him, but that warmth wasn't in its heart. It was just in its body. And he could see the difference now.

Nonetheless, he dozed off, slowly caressing the arm draped over him.

That day, he missed the appointment, because he just couldn't make himself get up.

Days later, he still hadn't made another one. He just couldn't. Okay, he didn't want to. At all. Because he wanted back what he'd had four month before. The reminders came in every few days.

And then he did start noticing it looking out the windows. But every time he came home from work, it wasn't listening to music. It was just looking out the windows, like it wanted out. And Marcus watched it, stared at it, really, for hours on end, whenever he could be home. He was waiting for it to talk to him. Praying it would talk to him. He started to say things to it, trying to draw out something real. But it never spoke. He even offered to take it outside, but it didn't even turn its head.

Watching it... It was like watching himself.

He knew he should have just taken it in. Whatever strange miracle had happened the first time he'd run over on time with his appointments, it wasn't happening this time. This time, there was a darkness in the air that wouldn't dissipate no matter what he did. And it was impossible to ignore.

He couldn't help but think it hated him.

That was doubly true when he got home from work fourteen days into this grand little experiment. He walked over to it, touching its arm, like he usually did when he got home, thinking he was going to get a kiss. And it pulled away from him, as if repulsed by his touch. And that was the last time he touched it.

Soon enough, the calls came every day. And he knew he was running out of time.

That morning, he'd gotten a personal call from his point-of-contact with H.O.I.D., and he refused to answer it, telling Margo to take a message for him.

At that point, he was frustrated out of his mind. He only had a couple of days left before it was going to shut down again.

Marcus walked up to it, standing behind it as it looked out the window. When it didn't even acknowledge him, he blurted out, "I'm going to fucking have to take you back to that place. Do you understand? I'm surprised they aren't already banging on the damned door."

It turned its head to him, perhaps because of the ire leaking into his voice.

"Do you understand? They're going to do their maintenance again and, everything you're doing, you're not going to be doing it anymore. You're going to be as stupid as the fucking AI running my apartment!"

Okay, that was an exaggeration. This creature before him was light-years beyond Margo's standard AI, even after maintenance. But it still felt the same now.

"I... I don't want to wait two and a half months for this, over and over again, only to have them reset you every time. And, considering these last few days... I don't think you want that either. And it doesn't help my sanity at all that they're threatening me for days on end. I don't even know if they'll let me keep doing this, no matter how much money I throw at them. And I..." He pressed his lips together, shaking his head slightly. "I just... I can't stand this. If this doesn't change, I really don't think I can keep you."

It only stared. Tears came to Marcus' eyes.

"Do you understand? Do you even care? I know you're fucking thinking something, and you better tell me what it is before I go crazy!"

It glowered at him. "Why do you not let me talk? You ask all these questions, as if you expect an answer. But I can't speak."

"Why?" Marcus huffed. "Why, because..."

His bewildered ill-humor dropped away. Now the reason he'd done it didn't seem even remotely fair to his android. He hadn't thought about his HOID when he'd made those decisions, not really. In reality, he'd been thinking about himself and what he wanted. He'd put those restrictions on it just to make it easier on himself.

Fuck, maybe he really was as selfish as the rest of them.

"I-I'm sorry. I... I wasn't thinking about, well, you. What you wanted. I thought it would be easier to tell when the changes started happening."

It continued its stare for another few seconds, watching Marcus' heavy, tearful, frustrated breaths. And then it looked back out the window. That was a dismissal if Marcus had ever seen one.

"I... Please. I don't want this to end. I want things to be good between us." The human took a step closer, close enough that he could have touched it if he'd reached out. "I just…"

And here he was, desperately begging his own robot for a good, stable, peaceful relationship. If only the world could see him now.

He shook off those thoughts and tried to move to the next logical step, because his android didn't seem impressed in the least with his near-love declaration, although the idea that what was happening between them could have been in any way associated with love…

Love? Marcus pressed his lips together. Now that the idea was in his head, he couldn't get it out. Was he in love with this thing? If so, when had he fallen? The more he thought about it, the more he could see the truth in it.

He was in love with his biological, made-to-order machine, one who didn't even have a name because he'd never given it one. The shame he felt in that moment was overwhelming, leaving him dizzy. He deserved exactly how it was treating him. After all, he'd been treating it exactly how society expected him to treat it, like it was his property. Which it technically was, but it wasn't as if it'd had any say in the matter. When it came down to it, what he was doing, it was slavery, plain and simple. And he didn't even have to beat it to gain its compliance. He just had to say a word, and it had to do whatever he wanted. What better way was there to drive a conscious being insane?

His desperation, self-hatred, and confusion only growing, along with the dire need to touch it, he said, "I need to figure out a way to fix this. There's got to be a way to stop you from shutting down."

But how was that going to help? If he did manage to alter his android's programming, altering one of these proprietary machines was very against the contract he'd signed, which was more of a lease agreement than anything, and very illegal. People had gone to prison for attempting to alter HOIDs, their pictures splashed on the news on occasion for a hacking incident and straight down to theft of a HOID and then the hacking. Given what HOIDs were and what they could do and what they might possibly do under malicious hands, control over them was absolute, short of H.O.I.D. personnel moving in.

But it wasn't as if he really had a choice at that point. It was either keep it and keep doing the maintenance required by law, or send it back so they would tear it apart and recycle it, or change what the world demanded of him.

"I'll figure out a way. I swear it."

His creation finally looked back at him, staring. The stare lasted until Marcus finally couldn't take it anymore and stalked away. He picked his phone up off the table and dialed a number he'd memorized years ago. It wasn't a number Margo had in its system, for good reason.

When the other end picked up, the man's voice said, "What the fuck. Never thought I'd hear from you again. You need something? I got way better shit than last time."

"I need you to find something for me. I need a hacker who specializes in HOIDs. I'll pay you 100k if you can find one for me."

"Are you fucking serious?"

"I'm very fucking serious."

There was a couple of seconds of pause. "Okay, give me a few hours to ask around. Hackers aren't exactly my specialty, but how hard can they be to find in this city?"

"I need a good one. I don't care about the cost."

"Yeah, yeah, okay. I'll call you back."

Hours later, Marcus took his droid out for the first time in four months. It didn't protest. It didn't say a word. Marcus didn't know whether he should be grateful for that. They met the woman at Central Park. Apparently she had a basement apartment nearby.

Phoenix, which obviously wasn't her real name—well, maybe it was—walked around his android, critically studying its body, as if that could've shown her how it worked. Marcus wished her luck with that. "This is one of those new models, right? There's only like a few dozen of these in existence. Just one of these things..."

She stopped, crossing her arms over her oversized shirt that hung over a thin shoulder. If she would have bent over, there wouldn't have been any hope for the world's innocence. She was also tall as hell, taller than Marcus by at least a few inches, and he wasn't exactly short at five feet and eleven inches.

She stared at it longingly before she said, "It's the most powerful system ever created. I mean, no one's ever been able to test one completely, not outside of H.O.I.D. anyway. They have these things' systems locked down tight. But just one of these, they're thought to have more computing power than every device on the planet, combined.

"It's why they're so convincing as human. I mean, they basically _are_ human, able to think, reason, learn, all at rates much, much faster than ours. Up until this point, the only thing that's really been lacking in androids is intuition, a creative spark. But this model has that too.

"They're more than us. So much more. All of the computers I have back at my dump, they're barely a drop to what this thing is." She turned a raised brow at Marcus. "And you want me to make it more?"

"Yeah, I do."

"Okay, well, come on. Let's go to my disturbingly expensive apartment that you're going to be investing in for a number of years."

"That's the idea."

Phoenix grinned at him and led the way. When they entered the apartment, Marcus didn't think it was all that bad of a place. If he hadn't been who he was, this would have probably been exactly the kind of place he would have rented. It was in the middle of New York and all its action. It was decent sized, not completely run down, meaning the pipes worked and the walls and ceiling looked intact. The only thing that detracted from it, really, was the pounding footsteps that could occasionally be heard overhead.

"Have it sit there," she said, pointing to a chair, before she walked to the opposite side of the room to shuffle through junk on a desk.

It didn't need Marcus to tell it to do it. It stared at Marcus as it sat down. Its expression was unreadable and therefore unnerving. But, whatever it was thinking or feeling, it wasn't protesting like Marcus knew it could. Perhaps it wanted this chance as much as Marcus wanted it to have it. He wasn't about to ask though, not in front of her. He wasn't sure what she would have said about the anomalies it'd been displaying, so he kept that information to himself.

Phoenix walked near the android, grabbing a cable and attaching the specialized tip she'd apparently found. She popped open a small section of its scalp at the back of its head and inserted the tip. Then she walked over to her desk and sat down in front of half a dozen monitors. And a keyboard and mouse.

Marcus raised his brows at her. "You use a keyboard? Aren't those kind of archaic?"

She grinned back. "Graphical interfaces only let you do so much. There's restrictions, limitations. You'll never be able to access everything through them. Doing it this way, I can access everything I want the way I want. Trust me, it's better than your pretty 3D crap."

Marcus huffed. "If you say so."

"I do. So, look..." She typed a couple dozen commands that eventually led her to a prompt that let her sit back in her chair. "That's your android right there. Well, the backdoor of it. And that door has a key, an alpha-numeric encryption code that's trillions of characters long. Or more. No one's really sure how long it is, well, except those working for H.O.I.D. Even with all the computers on earth working together, you're never going to be able to crack it. At least not for a few decades."

"But," she continued on, "if you can get the code somehow, which you can't, then I can get into its subroutines. Right now they’re blocked. Not even the android itself can access them. It's like a black box. The instructions stream up from them, and it only goes one way. But at the same time, those routines can access everything else in the system so they can do what they have to do."

Quite a few sentences ago already, Marcus was pissed. "If that's all you had to say to me, then why bring me here? You could have said this shit over the phone."

"Okay, look, I can't completely break it open. That's not going to happen. But I can do other things. I can create a block so that it can't be shut down. That's your main problem, right? And I can create one that will take it out of their network. Those things will alter its personality a bit, but you'd get used to it."

"Alter its personality? I don't think I want it any more altered than it already is," he said. Phoenix raised her brow at him, but he ignored it. "And isn't that something they'll notice?"

"Well, yeah… But with the amount of money you apparently have, I'm sure you can work your way out of it. Buy one of those cheap-ass ones and burn it to a cinder or something and then report it lost." She shrugged, looking up at him. "If you want what you want, then you're going to have to compromise, sorry. These people have obscene amounts of money flowing through these things and some of the best engineers and programmers on the planet. They're not fucking around."

Marcus stepped closer to her, looking at the screen directly in front of her face, the one with the blinking prompt. "What… What if it could give it to you? The code, I mean."

She huffed at him. "And how's it going to do that?" Even as she said it, a blur of characters ran across the screen. "I think it... I think it knows the key somehow. Maybe it intercepted it during one of its maintenances or something."

And then a prompt appeared, the cursor blinking softly. She began to lift her hands to the keyboard. Before she could type though, more characters appeared on the screen. Almost immediately, the text moved so fast, it couldn't be made out.

"What the fuck? That's got to be your HOID doing all that. This system is closed. Wait… Whoa, whoa, whoa... What the hell's it doing to my computer? It's..."

The text paused. It was now 1's and 0's. Then the screen swarmed again, the whole of it becoming a blur of light.

"It's communicating in binary. It must have rewrote my whole system. It's fucking with my computer. This... It shouldn't be able to do this."

The fans inside the nearly dozen CPU's in the room suddenly blared. The sound made both of them jerk. Marcus watched with her, not understanding at all what he was seeing. Even if he had been able to make out the 1's and 0's, it wouldn't have made any more sense to him.

I-I don't think..." She suddenly jerked upright, her chair flipping backwards onto the ground with a crash, and rushed to the circuit breaker box next to the far end of the long desk. Before the switch could be flipped though, all of the monitors went dark and all of the fans went silent, leaving mainly her panicked breaths to fill the room. She paused, jerking her head to the sudden absence of light. She stared for a moment before saying, "I don't know what the hell just happened."

She turned her head to look at the droid. He did too. Its eyes were staring at Marcus.

"But I'd be surprised if it's a good thing," she added.

And then everything went out.


	8. Chapter 8

With the room pitch black, no light streaming in even through the tiny basement windows, Marcus panicked. Heart racing, his hand bolted sideways out to the desk to stabilize himself against the unknown. His mouth popped open, panting, but he couldn't manage to say anything.

Phoenix didn't have that trouble as she gasped out, "What the hell? Did it just turn off the power?"

He'd never been afraid of the dark, not even as a child. But he had been afraid of the monster in his closet or under his bed or whatever place currently suited its fancy and gave it the best opportunity to sneak attack. Those monster sightings had never earned him much sympathy from his mom or dad. Even at the vulnerable age of six, they'd expected him to be more than he was. But, yeah, he'd never afraid of the dark.

So, it wasn't the dark that scared him at that moment. It was what was in the room with them that made his breaths tremble and his heart race and his body glean with sweat. He was afraid of what his creation might do. To him. There hadn't been an ounce of trust or adoration in his android's eyes before everything had gone out, things that had been there before before.

He couldn't see it in the dark, couldn't see its glowing tattoo either. He had no idea where it was at that moment, if it'd left the chair or not. But he knew it could see him. Androids been made that way, adaptable to situations a human would have a difficult or impossible time with.

Yes, he'd also feared it four and a half months before when it'd first disobeyed him, but not like this. He hadn't feared for his life that day. He hadn't been concerned about keeping his body intact.

This night, he feared for his life, because he was already sure it hated him. Honestly though, he couldn't blame it. He'd known that his android was conscious and thinking being. And he'd seen its, well, depression. He knew what depression looked like. He'd seen it far too much in himself. But even while knowing how much the android hurt inside its own mind, Marcus had also done so little to help it. He could have done more before this day. He could have done so much more. His desperate, end-of-the-line action impressed him probably as little as it did the android.

And then he heard it, pounding footsteps, coming directly at him from the direction of the chair. He heard them even over his heart pounding in his head and his uncontrolled breaths that were making him lightheaded. "Oh, fuck, no."

In his darker moments, he'd wanted death, yeah, but he didn't want it that day. Not at all.

A hand grabbed his upper arm. He gasped and tried to rip it away. But the grip was relentless.

"Please, no!"

"Marcus?" Phoenix shrieked at him. He could hear her footsteps edging closer.

If only he'd studied fucking karate or something instead of drug dosages. Like that would have helped him against this thing. Maybe swordplay or something. Like swords were a normal thing to carry around NYC. He probably would have gotten arrested before making it a block with all the cameras lining the streets.

"Move," it hissed at him.

Marcus' chest constricted as he stilled. It wasn't going to give him a choice. He could see that. And he deserved that too, but it still scared the shit out of him.

He never would have hurt his android, not intentionally, not physically, anyway. It wasn't in him to do that. He never would have been able to live with himself. But he couldn't say the same for it.

He knew though that it could easily drag him, and if he didn't cooperate, it was probably going to do just that. Worse, Phoenix was obviously going to in the middle of it in a second or two.

So, he relented and willingly let his android drag him from the room, up the cement steps, and onto the open sidewalk. It wasn't too crowded there, considering it was only around ten, but there were still people and cars about. The cars were, in fact, the only light source. The sky was cloudy and no starlight or moonlight could seep through. Everyone probably thought it was a power outage. And maybe it was. Maybe it was just a coincidence that'd it happened right at the moment his robot had decided it could do whatever the hell it wanted.

Marcus noted in the back of his mind that he probably would have been proud of the thing for doing all this, if he hadn't been terrified out of his mind and growing increasingly terrified for the world.

Phoenix had said this android's model contained the most powerful AI ever created. What exactly was this thing capable of? Could it really turn off a whole city? And, if it was as pissed off as Marcus believed it was...

What exactly did it plan to do about it?

And why did it need him to do it?

Was it going to take him to a quiet corner and torture him? Was it going to make him its bitch? Well, technically, he already was. He would have done anything for it, willingly and with pleasure, short of maiming and killing for it. But maybe it didn't realize that. And he hadn't given it enough reason to think otherwise.

A block away, all of the street lights and lights in buildings flickered back on. After several blocks more, it came to a dead stop in the middle of the sidewalk. Marcus took another step before the grip on him stopped him cold, and he swung a bit around with his forward momentum.

"Why did you let me do that to you?"

"What?" Marcus' mind scrambled to understand what the hell it was talking about. What had he let his android do? His face scrunched up with his confusion, he said, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Two and a half years ago."

"What?" he asked, his confusion infallible.

Two and a half years ago? He hadn't even had it that far back. He'd only had it for seven months now.

...But he'd had a different android two and a half years ago, for less than twenty-four hours. What the fuck?

"How the fuck do you know about that?"

How _could_ it know? He'd never told it about it. He'd erased the damned security footage, for Christ's sake. It wasn't like he kept a diary for all of his darkest desires and greatest mistakes. There was no way it could have know about what had happened that night. But apparently it did.

And how long had it known? Had it kept that knowledge from him for all these months. Or worse, had it found out about it tonight? Worse because Marcus then had a pretty good idea how it'd obtained the knowledge.

It stared back at him, searching his face, a mirrored confusion of its own there. "Why? Why would you let me do that to you?"

"That wasn't you." He could barely manage the words. Suddenly their closeness was way, way to close, and he wanted to get away. So fucking badly. He started to push back with his heels but it wouldn't let him go. The grip wasn't hurting him, not really. Any damage done was caused by his own fight. It had more control and strength than that.

"Not physically, maybe," it continued, "and I have no memory of it, which makes sense, considering. But is it any different to you?"

Marcus didn't know whether he was blanching or coloring. His body felt like ice even as his skin crawled with life. He knew he was hyperventilating. Marcus worked his jaw up and down, shaking his head slightly. He didn't know what to say to it. How could he ever explain himself and what he'd done two years ago?

Its head came slightly closer so that Marcus heavy breaths pulsed on its face but it didn't seem to care. "I know everything about you. Except what you think. You've never said one single word of substance to anyone in this world. And certainly not to me."

Marcus' hand leaped up, and he shoved at it. It was like hitting a brick wall. "Let me the fuck go!"

"Just tell me why. So I can understand."

Frustrated tears filled Marcus' eye as his body trembled in the heated, smoggy night air. "What does it matter if you understand my fucked up head or not?" Marcus blurted out. It kept staring at him, expecting an answer. "I... I can't explain it. I don't know how. I just... I just wanted you to. I wanted you to do what I couldn't. I wanted you to say no or yes or whatever because you wanted to... I just... I wanted you to have a choice."

"And yet you gave me none now."

"I never forced you to do anything."

"But you did."

Marcus finally broke down and sobbed, tears flowing freely. "I didn't mean to! I'm so fucking sorry!"

It grabbed his face with both hand, strongly, giving Marcus no choice but to stand there. And then it was kissing him, deeply, hard, making it so hard to breathe the air his body demanded, but at the same time, took his breath away. Marcus fisted the t-shirt in under his hand, his other hand wrapping around and fisting the shirt at its back, pressing his creation solidly against him. He kissed back with everything he had.

He didn't know if this was a goodbye or a truce or something else all together, but if there was any chance this creature was going to leave him afterwards, he wanted to give everything he was to it. And more. He wanted the HOID to take it all with it. Even if all that was left of him was an empty husk, at least a part of him would be free.

It moaned in his mouth and then pushed him away by his face but still held on. It stared hard at him and his wet, swollen lips, his blanch, tear-stained cheeks, his reddened eyes. He'd certainly looked better in his lifetime, but none of those things seemed to matter to the android.

He didn't want it to go. He'd never wanted something more in his life.

"Please don't leave me," Marcus heard himself choking out. The words, the naked admission of desperation and want brought more tears to his eyes and more sweat to his skin. He didn't expect it to stay with him. He expected it to shake its head, turn around, and wash its hands of him. It was something any reasonable person would have done, unless they were after his money, of course.

Its eyes flickered over his face, taking in all of him. Marcus pressed his lips together to try to stop his sputtering. It was incredibly difficult to stand there like this, sobbing like a baby when his android hadn't even wiped a tear away. It was humiliating to say the least. But it wouldn't let him go so he could cower away and lick his wounds.

"I'm not going to leave you," it said, finally.

Another sob burst out of Marcus, one he'd been doing his damnedest to hold in. It kissed his cheeks, at the wetness there.

Against his skin, it whispered, "I could take away what I feel for you, block it from myself. I could take away all these feelings and emotions with only a thought. But I'm afraid of what I'll become, if I do. I'm afraid there will be nothing left inside me, like all these other machines in this world" It rested its forehead against Marcus'. "I don't want to lose what I feel for you. I can't imagine being without it."

The guilt at forcing this life upon it and the simple, greedy pleasure Marcus felt at those words... He started sobbing again. He really couldn't help it. He hadn't cried this much in years. And he hated it. But also couldn't stop it. It hushed him, but he still couldn't stop.

More quietly, it said, "But I also can't allowed things to continue the way they are. And I hope you can forgive me for what I have to do."

Marcus pulled back slightly, the sobs yanked from him with his understanding of what the words might mean. "What... What're you talking about?"

"I can't let the world continue on the way it is. I can't ignore it."

Marcus' heart seemed to stop. "What are you going to do?"

"You'll see."


End file.
